Born in a small town, Rodney Copperbottom (voice by Ewan McGregor) is a young robot with big ideas about making the world a better place. In pursuit of his dreams, Rodney strikes out for Robot City. There he hopes to meet his hero, Bigweld (Mel Brooks), a famous entrepreneur who always works to help improve every robots quality of life. But when Rodney arrives at Bigweld Industries, he learns that Phineas T. Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) has taken over for Bigweld, who is nowhere to be found. And Rodney also discovers that Ratchet is nothing like his predecessor. Instead of trying to help robots, Ratchet is only interested in making money, which he will do it at any cost even sacrificing outmoded robots to the scrap heap. So now Rodney and his friends, Fender (Robin Williams) and Cappy (Halle Berry), must try to find Bigweld and save Robot City from Ratchets evil ploy.

From beginning to end, Robots is a visually stimulating movie. The wonderful, computer-animated scenes are beautiful, funny and exciting to watch. The questionable content in the film is minimal, so despite some lulls in the action, kids should really enjoy the humor and animated physical comedy. But the film also deals with real issues, asking whether or not a persons appearance or age affects his or her ultimate value. And some viewers might even detect the issue of euthanasia in the film, since the antagonist in the story wants to melt down the outmoded robots something that the robots interpret as the end of a life. Unfortunately, the overall story is not quite as good as the individual elements are; the various parts of the story dont always seem to fit together well, making the movie good, but not great.

Preview Reviewer:
Shaun Daugherty
Distributor:
20th Century Fox

SummaryCrude Language:
Few (4) times moderate (other 4)
Obscene Language:
Few (3) times mild (other 2); moderate (scr-w 1)
Profanity:
None
Violence:
Several times mild (several scenes include animated violence, falling and other physical comedy); moderate (numerous robots fight in an extended sequence, robots are attacked by machines searching for scrap metal)
Sexual Intercourse:
None
Nudity:
None
Homosexual Conduct:
None
Sexually Suggestive Action/Dialog:
Few times mild (a robot and his wife talk about having fun making a baby, a male and female robot express interest in each other because of the size and shape of their bodies, reference to a robot having a girlfriend, a male and female robot talk about meeting up for a date)
Drug Abuse:
None
Other:
Themes of self-acceptance and having a positive self-image, outmoded robots are oppressed and diminished by other new robots who are concerned only with outward appearance, possible correlation with euthanasia when outmoded robots are considered useless by some so that they may be sent to their death by being melted for scrap
Running Time:90 minutesIntended Audience:Kids through Adults